Aspects of the present invention relate in general to meeting management solutions, and more particularly, to methods for creating a meeting agenda based on past meeting statistics. Meetings often play an integral role in how one allocates his or her time. For example, often a person with a busy work schedule would prefer not to spend more time than expected at a particular meeting when he or she has other urgent matters to attend to. Conversely, a person with a busy schedule may be frustrated if a meeting ends much earlier than intended, as that person could have scheduled other activities during the time allocated for the meeting. In addition, it is generally desirable that the meeting accomplish each of its scheduled items of business so as not to necessitate the scheduling of an additional meeting.
Nevertheless, planning and managing a meeting agenda can be difficult. Planning a meeting generally involves estimating the time required for each agenda item, and then calculating the total meeting time. Because a lot of factors may influence the amount of time actually needed for a particular item, it is often difficult to estimate a relatively accurate time allocation among all of the agenda items. If the time allocated to the various agenda items ends up being inconsistent with the actual times spent on them, the actual length of the meeting may end up being longer or shorter than the estimated and scheduled meeting length. In other scenarios, even if a meeting ends on time, it may be possible that too much time was spent on one agenda item while insufficient time was spent allotted to other items. Either of these scenarios may necessitate the scheduling of an additional meeting.